The Hills of Maseru

I am thoroughly exhausted right now after an eventful six hour walking journey around the hills/mountains surrounding Maseru. Suzanna and I left the house at 8:30 this morning with the plan of walking down toward Pope Field (the field where the Pope came to visit like twenty years ago...they still have the structure up that he spoke from) and finding our way up the hills. There are no marked trails of anything here, just paths carved by herders and people who have their feet as the only mode of transportation.

We first went down a road that led us to a VERY nice neighborhood with houses that are unbelievable even by rich American standards. We thought we could cut behind them to the village built on the side of the mountain, but there was a jagged fence surrounding it, so we had to walk around. We finally made our way up to the village, meandering past one room cement homes, tiny tin shacks and some fairly decent places. Everyone has a fence around their house, mostly, we think to keep animals away from their gardens (where they grow cabbage and corn mostly). Everyone here says hi to you when you walk by, and they ask "where are you going?" They mean it more like we would say "how are you?"

Eventually, we got to where we found a more clear path through the houses, and headed to it. A woman was putting out a white tattered flag in her yard, about 20 feet high, which signifies that she has beer ready for sale. We didn't sample any, but I may in the future.

So after about five minutes of walking through the village, we were surrounded by laughing children, so eventually just followed us up the paths. Two twelve year old girls had very good English, and one was a chatterbox. They like to say "I love you," and they were obsessed with my long hair. They all have close cropped hair and kept wanting to touch my two braids. We told them we wanted to go to the top of the mountain, so they led us up they paths. And, yes, a few were barefoot, and a few had very flimsy shoes on, while Suzanna and I were wearing our rugged hiking shoes. The paths were pretty loose and gravelly, so we had to be careful navigating our way around.

On the way up, I found out that most people in the village get to eat meat about once a week, usually on Saturday, and the rest of the time they eat corn based samp (corn porridge) or papa (super condensed samp) and beans or cabbage.

The view from the top was great, you could see way out into South Africa, all of Maseru (including the football stadium) and large yellow swatches of sunflower fields. It was cloudy and a little rainy, but the view was still great.

Suzanna and I figured we head down the way we came up, but the kids led us the the far side of the summit. It looked as if we were going to fall off the edge, but just at the last minute, a path appeared and we scrambled down with children trying to hold our hands, talk to us, and just be as close as possible. There was one little boy (~4 yrs old) who was pulling all kinds of antics the whole way down. He was adorable.

We left them at the village, and were going to cross over to the next mountain/hill, when a woman invited us to the "Godfest". She was going to church (an enclosed blue and white striped party tent) that was blaring music behind us. She asked us to come with her, but we decided that we weren't in the mood to experience the "Godfest". So we climbed again, and after a few hours, we made our way back down to town, and then to our house.

We're both pretty wiped out now, and have plans to go to the gym first thing tomorrow morning, but we'll see how that goes. For now, I'm going to do some work and then we're going to watch the Cup of Nations final tonight. I'm rooting for Cameroon, Suzanna for Egypt.